The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
nObama's New Middle East
by Caroline B. Glick
~~~
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'liar-Hillary Coverup Operation'
In March 2015, not long after news first broke of liar-Hillary Clinton's use of a private server while serving as secretary of state, Barack nObama was asked in an interview when he first learned of her practice. nObama responded, "Uh, the same time everybody else learned it — through news reports." Last October, nObama answered another interview question — "Did you know about liar-Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server?" — with a terse, "No." Fast forward to the latest Friday afternoon news dump. The FBI released another 189 pages of liar-Clinton investigation notes, which reveal that during liar-Hillary's time as secretary of state nObama had emailed her private account under a pseudonym. Clearly, nObama's earlier assertions of ignorance were blatant lies. He not only knew, but covered up his knowledge at the time — or at least tried to keep his own hands clean.
Speaking of cover-ups, also contained within the FBI notes released on Friday was a reference made by an IT contractor managing liar-Clinton's private server, who labeled a work ticket "liar-Hillary coverup operation." If that doesn't perfectly sum up the whole fiasco, we don't know what does. When CNN's Jake Tapper questioned liar-Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook about this damning reference, Mook deflected by stating that the FBI had cleared liar-Hillary of any wrongdoing. When pressed, Mook turned and blamed Republicans for "selectively leaking information." A strange response given that it was the FBI that released this information late on a Friday afternoon.
On a final note, we also learned that the Justice Department granted immunity deals to three of liar-Clinton's closest advisers in exchange for information. The question is, why were immunity deals needed if the FBI concluded that no criminal activity occurred? Logically, one would assume that if immunity were offered to someone, it would have been needed in order to prosecute someone else of an even greater crime. Yet liar-Clinton walked.
This all is smelling like a much larger cover-up that may now even have connections to the White House. The tech company, the attorney general, the FBI director and the president were all complicit in covering for liar-Clinton. "liar-Hillary coverup operation," indeed.
~The Patriot Post
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Cruz's Tepid Endorsement
On Friday, Ted Cruz finally (gingerly) threw his support behind Donald Trump. Cruz posted on Facebook, "After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump." Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but Cruz has come a long way. The news was greeted by a combination of dismay and relief. There were those "Never Trump" Cruz supporters who were angered by the news, feeling that Cruz had sold out to the Republican establishment. And there were those Republicans relieved that the deepening party rift exposed during the nomination process was at least somewhat mended.
But it seems that Cruz's decision to support Trump may have been motivated more by consideration for his own political future than any suddensense of party loyalty. As much as Cruz billed himself as the anti-establishment guy, warnings from the RNC's Reince Priebus to those who didn't support Trump coupled with the tightening polls were enough to cause Cruz to blink. At July's
convention, Cruz was betting that Trump's political stock would inevitably fall, propelling his own "I told you so" position politically. Now that Trump's made it a close race, Cruz finds himself in the awkward position of having to play politics the same as all "establishment" politicians.But it seems that Cruz's decision to support Trump may have been motivated more by consideration for his own political future than any suddensense of party loyalty. As much as Cruz billed himself as the anti-establishment guy, warnings from the RNC's Reince Priebus to those who didn't support Trump coupled with the tightening polls were enough to cause Cruz to blink. At July's
One bright spot in this for Cruz is that he was perhaps able to convince Trump to add Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to the updated list of proposed Supreme Court justices. As a Cruz spokesman said, "Trump's willingness and decisive action to release a list of conservative jurists, particularly including Mike Lee, with the promise to choose from that list, was a top factor in Cruz's ultimate decision." The remaining question is, will this help Trump more in 2016, or Cruz in 2018 and 2020?
nObama’s army of PR staffers costs
taxpayers $500 million per year
by Stephen Dinan
{washingtontimes.com} ~ President nObama has swelled the ranks of government PR, adding hundreds of new public relations specialists to the federal payroll during his time in office... costing taxpayers a half-billion dollars a year, the government’s chief watchdog said Wednesday. That doesn’t include the more than $100 million the administration spends annually for help from private sector spinmeisters, nor does it account for the $800 million spent on contracts for advertising in 2015, according to the Government Accountability Office. “Spending $1.5 billion on government PR activities is a huge waste of money. That sort of spending should be drastically scaled back,” said Chris Edwards, a federal budget scholar at the Cato Institute...nObama should of not been in office at all.
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Cover-up liar-Clinton
by David Robertson
{wizbangblog.com} ~ Over at The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky wants to give his readers some Straight Talk About ‘Crooked liar-Hillary’ Clinton... In his defense of liar-Clinton, he claims that attacks on liar-Clinton during the 90s were based on ideology alone. Move along, citizens. There is nothing to see. Perhaps Tomasky wasn’t reading the New York Times back in the 90s. If he had, then he would have read this NYT story from June 1, 1996: “After nearly two years of searches and subpoenas, the White House said this evening that it had unexpectedly discovered copies of missing documents from liar-Hillary Rodham Clinton’s law firm that describe her work for a failing savings and loan association in the 1980’s. Federal and Congressional investigators have issued subpoenas for the documents since 1994, and the White House has said it did not have them. The originals disappeared from the Rose Law Firm, in which Mrs. liar-Clinton was a partner, shortly before Mr. liar-Clinton took office.”... http://wizbangblog.com/2016/10/05/cover-up-clinton/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wizbang+%28Wizbang%29
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liar-Clinton Interview
With Steve Harvey Was Scripted
by Jason Devaney
{newsmax.com} ~ liar-Hillary Clinton's interview with Steve Harvey earlier this year was scripted by the campaign, according to a new report... The Washington Free Beacon cited an internal liar-Clinton memo that shows the producers of the "Steve Harvey Show" sent the liar-Clinton campaign the questions that would be posed to liar-Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee. The campaign also helped craft the questions and even provided answers for liar-Clinton to say. "Steve is known to be a host who goes out of his way to make his guests feel comfortable," two liar-Clinton communications aides wrote in a memo to liar-Clinton herself ahead of the Feb. 17 interview. "We coordinated closely with the show's producers on the script and format of the show."... http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/clinton-steve-harvey-interview-scripted/2016/10/05/id/751892/?ns_mail_uid=29878495&ns_mail_job=1690922_10062016&s=al&dkt_nbr=dmeqcczf
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Germany Imports Child Marriage
by Soeren Kern
by Soeren Kern
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ German authorities are debating the contours of a new law that would crack down on child marriages after it emerged that some 1,500 underage brides are now living in the country... The married minors are among the more than one million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who entered Germany in 2015. The German Interior Ministry, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, recently revealed that 1,475 married children are known to be living in Germany as of July 31, 2016 — including 361 children who are under the age of 14. Most of the married children are from Syria (664), Afghanistan (157) and Iraq (100). Nearly 80% (1,152) are girls. The true number of child marriages in Germany is believed to be much higher than the official statistics suggest because many are being concealed...
.
Has the Russian Mole Inside NSA
Finally Been Arrested?
by John R. Schindler
{observer.com} ~ Six weeks ago in this column I explained that the National Security Agency, our nation’s most secretive spy service, almost certainly remains penetrated by one or more Russian moles... Not only is Edward Snowden hardly the super-spy he’s claimed to be, in truth he’s no more than a patsy whose purpose has been to distract attention from the real Russian intelligence penetrations of NSA. The idea that the Kremlin has more moles lurking inside NSA made front-page news in August with the public appearance of Top Secret hacking tools apparently stolen from the Agency. Embarrassingly, those were posted online by the mysterious “Shadow Brokers,” which gave every appearance of being yet another front for Moscow and its spy services. How had it obtained such closely guarded secrets? Today we learned from the Justice Department that, just four days after my column appeared, the FBI executed a search warrant on the residence of Harold Thomas Martin III of Glen Burnie, Maryland. Inside Martin’s residence and his car, the FBI found evidence of criminal activity including possible espionage. The arrest affidavit which on security grounds never mentions NSA, though that was Martin’s place of employment spells out what Bureau agents found: information that was classified at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level—including six documents of recent vintage from an unnamed government agency which is certainly NSA...
.
nObama Aids Iranian Nuclear Terror
by Daniel Greenfield
{frontpagemag.com} ~ Senator nObama opposed naming Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a terror group even while it was closely involved in organizing attacks against American soldiers in Iraq... Then, as part of his dirty deal with Iran, he secretly sent a fortune in foreign cash on airplanes linked to the IRGC. And, as another part of the secret ransom deal with Iran, he lifted UN sanctions on Bank Sepah. The United States has gone after plenty of banks for aiding terror finance, but Bank Sepah is somewhat unique in that it is a financial institution actually owned and operated by Islamic terrorists. Bank Sepah is an IRGC bank. The IRGC, despite nObama’s denials, is an Islamic terror group with American blood on its hands. It is to Shiite Islam what ISIS is to Sunni Islam. And even the Democrats know it... http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264371/obama-aids-iranian-nuclear-terror-daniel-greenfield
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First Truths . . .
by AMBASSADOR HENRY F. COOPER
by AMBASSADOR HENRY F. COOPER
{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ My last two messages observed that we were "whistling past the graveyard" in collectively pretending all is well while ignoring the looming existential threat to all Americans posed by natural and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events... The first message criticized the prepared testimony of four witnesses before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific in a hearing on "North Korea's Perpetual Provocations: Another Dangerous, Escalatory Nuclear Test." In my opinion, their prepared testimony badly understated the threat from North Korea - and I expressed hope that the full hearing rectified this failure. Regrettably, that did not happen. The second message criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)-North American Electrical Reliability Corporation (NERC) alliance as being a "self-licking ice cream cone." NERC, heavily funded by Electric Power Companies, develops and recommends regulations of the electric power industry - and FERC approves them. Like having the only path to life-saving medicine based on recommendations from businesses selling the same medical products, without a third party independent government screening of the pharmaceutical suppliers... http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/first-truths?f=must_reads
.
nObama and military are still at
odds over Islamic terrorism
by LT. COLONEL JAMES G. ZUMWALT, USMC (RET)
by LT. COLONEL JAMES G. ZUMWALT, USMC (RET)
{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ It has taken eight years for President Barack nObama to be asked "the question." Unsurprisingly, it did not originate from the media. It came from one suffering a great personal loss in the war on terror-her son-and she deserved an answer... Gold Star mother Tina Houchins asked nObama at a September 28 CNN presidential town hall why he still refuses to link terrorism to Islam. nObama's response suggests he is lying-and harboring a motive he is unwilling to share-or else has no respect for young men, like Houchins' son, who battled Islamic terrorism. Describing the issue Houchins raised as "sort of manufactured," nObama explained. It is unconscionable nObama chooses to take an ostrich-like mindset towards Islamic terrorism while unabashedly attaching right wing extremist labels to our brave warriors fighting it. And he does this despite the former's long history of terrorism and the latter's lack thereof... http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obama-and-military-are-still-at-odds-over-islamic-terrorism?f=must_reads
.
“Random” Child Actress Planted In liar-Clinton
Audience For Staged Question, Answer
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ liar-Hillary Clinton does not have a sincere or honest cell in her body. Everything she says and does is scripted, choreographed and staged... That includes questions from little girls “selected at random” in a campaign event in Pennsylvania. It also includes older gentlemen similarly chosen to read a question handed to him about gun control and the wonderful aftermath of criminal-friendly Australia after gun confiscation. The young lady supposedly just selected because she had a red bow in her hair, not the other way around with a red bow placed in her hair to make her easy to identify in the Haverford, PA crowd was child actor, Brennan Leach. Amazingly, a child actor who had a question written out for her in the same manner that Gene Wojohowsk, the primary gun control questioner had his question printed out for him on a card. Young Ms Leach performed much better than Gene did. He apparently was not a professional actor. Again, as the coincidences keep piling up, it’s noteworthy that Brennan Leach is the daughter of Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach, a liar-Clinton supporter... http://rickwells.us/random-child-actress-planted-clinton-audience-staged-question/
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Planning Vote Fraud to “Elect” liar-Hillary
by Cliff Kincaid
{aim.org} ~ The liberal media insist that requiring a photo ID to vote is a racist plot by Republicans. Yet students have to go through a rigorous procedure to take the college admission test known as the SAT. Is that racist, too?... My son took the SAT recently and had to print out and take two pages of identification and requirements for test-taking. One page had a photo head shot and listings for birth date, sex, high school, registration number and location for the test center. When checking in, he had to produce another photo ID and the person checking him in had to compare the photo ID to the print-out and what he actually looked like checking in. The purpose is to make sure there is no cheating. The “progressives” do not think it is necessary to check ID in this manner when free, fair and honest elections are at stake... http://www.aim.org/aim-column/planning-vote-fraud-to-elect-hillary/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email100616&utm_medium=email
.
.
nObama's New Middle East
by Caroline B. Glick
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ A new Syria is emerging. And with it, a new Middle East and world are presenting themselves. Our new world is not a peaceful or stable one. It is a harsh place.
The new Syria is being born in the rubble of Aleppo.
The eastern side of the city, which has been under the control of US-supported rebel groups since 2012, is being bombed into the Stone Age by Russian and Syrian aircraft.
All avenues of escape have been blocked. A UN aid convoy was bombed in violation of a fantasy cease-fire.
Medical facilities and personnel are being targeted by Russia and Syrian missiles and barrel bombs to make survival impossible.
It is hard to assess how long the siege of eastern Aleppo by Russia, its Iranian and Hezbollah partners and its Syrian regime puppet will last. But what is an all but foregone conclusion now is that eastern Aleppo will fall. And with its fall, the Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah-Assad axis will consolidate its control over all of western Syria.
For four years, the Iranians, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad played a cat and mouse game with the rebel militias.
Fighting a guerrilla war with the help of the Sunni population, the anti-regime militias were able to fight from and hide from within the civilian population. Consequently, they were all but impossible to defeat.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to join the fight, he and his generals soon recognized that this manner of fighting ensured perpetual war. So they changed tactics. The new strategy involves speeding up the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of rebel-held areas. The massive refugee flows from Syria over the past year are a testament to the success of the barbaric war plan. The idea is to defeat the rebel forces by to destroying the sheltering civilian populations.
Since the Syrian war began some five years ago, half of the pre-war population of 23 million has been displaced.
Sunnis, who before the war comprised 75% of the population, are being targeted for death and exile. More than 4 million predominantly Sunni Syrians are living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. More than a million have entered Europe. Millions more have been internally displaced. Assad has made clear that they will never be coming home.
At the same time, the regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah masters have been importing Shi’ites from Iran, Iraq and beyond. The process actually began before the war started. In the lead-up to the war some half million Shi’ites reportedly relocated to Syria from surrounding countries.
This means that at least as far as western Syria is concerned, once Aleppo is destroyed, and the 250,000 civilians trapped in the eastern part of what was once Syria’s commercial capital are forced from their homes and property, the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and their Syrian fig leaf Assad will enjoy relative peace in their areas of control.
By adopting a strategy of total war, Putin has ensured that far from becoming the quagmire that President Barack nObama warned him Syria would become, the war in Syria has instead become a means to transform Russia into the dominant superpower in the Mediterranean, at the US’s expense.
Exchange for saving Assad’s neck and enabling Iran and Hezbollah to control Syria, Russia has received the capacity to successfully challenge US power. Last month Putin brought an agreement with Assad before the Duma for ratification. The agreement permits – indeed invites – Russia to set up a permanent air base in Khmeimim, outside the civilian airport in Latakia.
Russian politicians, media and security experts have boasted that the base will be able to check the power of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet and challenge NATO’s southern flank in the Mediterranean basin for the first time. The Russians have also decided to turn their naval station at Tartus into something approaching a fullscale naval base.
With Russia’s recent rapprochement with Turkish President Recip Erdogan, NATO’s future ability to check Russian power through the Incirlik air base is in question.
Even Israel’s ability to permit the US access to its air bases is no longer assured. Russia has deployed air assets to Syria that have canceled Israel’s regional air superiority.
Under these circumstances, in a hypothetical Russian-US confrontation, Israel may be unwilling to risk Russian retaliation for a decision to permit the US to use its air bases against Russia.
America’s loss of control over the eastern Mediterranean is a self-induced disaster.
For four years, as Putin stood on the sidelines and hedged his bets, nObama did nothing. As Iran and Hezbollah devoted massive financial and military assets to maintaining their puppet Assad in power, the nObama administration squandered chance after chance to bring down the regime and stem Iran’s regional imperial advance.
For his refusal to take action when such action could have easily been taken, nObama shares the responsibility for what Syria has become. This state of affairs is all the more infuriating because the hard truth is that it wouldn’t have been hard for the US to defeat the Iranian- Hezbollah axis. The fact that even without US help the anti-regime forces managed to hold on for four years shows how weak the challenge posed by Iran and Hezbollah actually was.
Russia only went into Syria when Putin was absolutely convinced that nObama would do nothing to stop him from dislodging America as the premier global power in the region.
As Michael Ledeen recalled earlier this week, nObama chose to stand on the sidelines in Syria because he wanted to make friends with Iran. nObama began his secret courtship of the mullahs even before he officially took office eight years ago.
After the war broke out in Syria, midway through his first term and in the following years, the Russians and the Iranians told the obsessed American president that if he took action against Assad, as strategic rationality dictated, he would get no nuclear deal, and no rapprochement with Tehran.
So nObama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake. nObama enabled the ethnic cleansing of Syria’s Sunni majority, and in turn facilitated the refugee crisis that is changing the face not only of the Middle East but of Europe as well.
And as it turns out, the deal with Iran that nObama willingly sacrificed US control of the Mediterranean to achieve has not ushered in a new era of regional moderation and stability through appeasement as nObama foresaw. It has weakened US credibility with its spurned Sunni allies. It has undermined the strategic position of Israel, the US’s only stable and reliable regional ally. It has financially and strategically fueled Iran’s hegemonic rise throughout the region. And it has facilitated Iran’s development of a nuclear arsenal.
Far from causing the Iranian to become more moderate, the nuclear deal has radicalized the regime still further.
On Wednesday Ray Takeyh wrote in The Washington Post that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is now grooming Ibrahim Raisi, a fanatic who makes Khamenei look moderate, to succeed him in power.
On Monday night, for the first time, Israel Air Force jets flying over Syria were shot at by Syrian anti-aircraft ordnance.
Air force sources told the media that the aircraft were never in danger and the munitions were only shot off after the aircraft had returned to Israel and were in the process off landing.
The fact that no one was hurt is of course reassuring.
But the fact that Russia targeted the planes makes clear that Putin has decided to send Israel a very clear and menacing message.
He is now the protector of the Iranian-Hezbollah colony on our northern border. If Israel decides to preemptively attack targets belong to that colony, Russia will not stand by and watch. And with the US no longer well-positioned to challenge Russian power in the region, Israel will have to deal with Russia on its own.
To face this challenge, Israel needs to look beyond its traditional reliance on air power.
There are two parts of the challenge. The first part is Iran.
As far as Israel is concerned, the problem with the Russian- Iranian takeover of Syria is not Putin.
Putin is not inherently hostile to Israel, as his Soviet predecessors were. He is an opportunist. nObama gave him the opportunity to partner with Iran in asserting Russian dominance in the Middle East and he took it. Israel is threatened by the alliance because it is threatened by Iran, not by Putin. To neutralize the alliance’s threat to its own security, Israel then needs to degrade Iran’s power, and it needs to emphasize its own.
To accomplish these goals, Israel needs to operate in two completely separate arenas. To weaken Iran, Israel should take its cue from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and from its own past successful military ties to the Kurds of Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s.
Israel needs to deploy military trainers beyond its borders to work with other anti-Iranian forces. The goal of that cooperation must be to destabilize the regime, with the goal of overthrowing it. This may take time. But it must be done. The only way to neutralize the threat emanating from the new Syria is to change the nature of the Iranian regime that controls it.
As for Russia, Israel needs to demonstrate that it is a power that Putin can respect in its own right, and not a downgraded Washington’s sock puppet.
To this end, Israel should embark on a rapid expansion of its civilian presence along its eastern border with Syria and with Jordan. As Russia’s air base in Syria undermines Israel’s air superiority and reliance on air power, Israel needs to show that it will not be dislodged or allow its own territory to be threatened in any way. By doubling the Israeli population on the Golan Heights within five years, and vastly expanding its population in the Jordan Valley, Israel will accomplish two goals at once. It will demonstrate its independence from the US without harming US strategic interests. And it will reinforce its eastern border against expanded strategic threats from both the Golan Heights and the new Jordan with its bursting population of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
It is ironic that the new Middle East is coming into focus as Shimon Peres, the failed visionary of a fantasy- based new Middle East, is being laid to rest. But to survive in the real new Middle East, Israel must bury Peres’s belief that peace is built by appeasing enemies along with him. The world in which we live has a place for dreamers.
But dreams, unhinged from reality, lead to Aleppo, not to peace.
The new Syria is being born in the rubble of Aleppo.
The eastern side of the city, which has been under the control of US-supported rebel groups since 2012, is being bombed into the Stone Age by Russian and Syrian aircraft.
All avenues of escape have been blocked. A UN aid convoy was bombed in violation of a fantasy cease-fire.
Medical facilities and personnel are being targeted by Russia and Syrian missiles and barrel bombs to make survival impossible.
It is hard to assess how long the siege of eastern Aleppo by Russia, its Iranian and Hezbollah partners and its Syrian regime puppet will last. But what is an all but foregone conclusion now is that eastern Aleppo will fall. And with its fall, the Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah-Assad axis will consolidate its control over all of western Syria.
For four years, the Iranians, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad played a cat and mouse game with the rebel militias.
Fighting a guerrilla war with the help of the Sunni population, the anti-regime militias were able to fight from and hide from within the civilian population. Consequently, they were all but impossible to defeat.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to join the fight, he and his generals soon recognized that this manner of fighting ensured perpetual war. So they changed tactics. The new strategy involves speeding up the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of rebel-held areas. The massive refugee flows from Syria over the past year are a testament to the success of the barbaric war plan. The idea is to defeat the rebel forces by to destroying the sheltering civilian populations.
Since the Syrian war began some five years ago, half of the pre-war population of 23 million has been displaced.
Sunnis, who before the war comprised 75% of the population, are being targeted for death and exile. More than 4 million predominantly Sunni Syrians are living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. More than a million have entered Europe. Millions more have been internally displaced. Assad has made clear that they will never be coming home.
At the same time, the regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah masters have been importing Shi’ites from Iran, Iraq and beyond. The process actually began before the war started. In the lead-up to the war some half million Shi’ites reportedly relocated to Syria from surrounding countries.
This means that at least as far as western Syria is concerned, once Aleppo is destroyed, and the 250,000 civilians trapped in the eastern part of what was once Syria’s commercial capital are forced from their homes and property, the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and their Syrian fig leaf Assad will enjoy relative peace in their areas of control.
By adopting a strategy of total war, Putin has ensured that far from becoming the quagmire that President Barack nObama warned him Syria would become, the war in Syria has instead become a means to transform Russia into the dominant superpower in the Mediterranean, at the US’s expense.
Exchange for saving Assad’s neck and enabling Iran and Hezbollah to control Syria, Russia has received the capacity to successfully challenge US power. Last month Putin brought an agreement with Assad before the Duma for ratification. The agreement permits – indeed invites – Russia to set up a permanent air base in Khmeimim, outside the civilian airport in Latakia.
Russian politicians, media and security experts have boasted that the base will be able to check the power of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet and challenge NATO’s southern flank in the Mediterranean basin for the first time. The Russians have also decided to turn their naval station at Tartus into something approaching a fullscale naval base.
With Russia’s recent rapprochement with Turkish President Recip Erdogan, NATO’s future ability to check Russian power through the Incirlik air base is in question.
Even Israel’s ability to permit the US access to its air bases is no longer assured. Russia has deployed air assets to Syria that have canceled Israel’s regional air superiority.
Under these circumstances, in a hypothetical Russian-US confrontation, Israel may be unwilling to risk Russian retaliation for a decision to permit the US to use its air bases against Russia.
America’s loss of control over the eastern Mediterranean is a self-induced disaster.
For four years, as Putin stood on the sidelines and hedged his bets, nObama did nothing. As Iran and Hezbollah devoted massive financial and military assets to maintaining their puppet Assad in power, the nObama administration squandered chance after chance to bring down the regime and stem Iran’s regional imperial advance.
For his refusal to take action when such action could have easily been taken, nObama shares the responsibility for what Syria has become. This state of affairs is all the more infuriating because the hard truth is that it wouldn’t have been hard for the US to defeat the Iranian- Hezbollah axis. The fact that even without US help the anti-regime forces managed to hold on for four years shows how weak the challenge posed by Iran and Hezbollah actually was.
Russia only went into Syria when Putin was absolutely convinced that nObama would do nothing to stop him from dislodging America as the premier global power in the region.
As Michael Ledeen recalled earlier this week, nObama chose to stand on the sidelines in Syria because he wanted to make friends with Iran. nObama began his secret courtship of the mullahs even before he officially took office eight years ago.
After the war broke out in Syria, midway through his first term and in the following years, the Russians and the Iranians told the obsessed American president that if he took action against Assad, as strategic rationality dictated, he would get no nuclear deal, and no rapprochement with Tehran.
So nObama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake. nObama enabled the ethnic cleansing of Syria’s Sunni majority, and in turn facilitated the refugee crisis that is changing the face not only of the Middle East but of Europe as well.
And as it turns out, the deal with Iran that nObama willingly sacrificed US control of the Mediterranean to achieve has not ushered in a new era of regional moderation and stability through appeasement as nObama foresaw. It has weakened US credibility with its spurned Sunni allies. It has undermined the strategic position of Israel, the US’s only stable and reliable regional ally. It has financially and strategically fueled Iran’s hegemonic rise throughout the region. And it has facilitated Iran’s development of a nuclear arsenal.
Far from causing the Iranian to become more moderate, the nuclear deal has radicalized the regime still further.
On Wednesday Ray Takeyh wrote in The Washington Post that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is now grooming Ibrahim Raisi, a fanatic who makes Khamenei look moderate, to succeed him in power.
On Monday night, for the first time, Israel Air Force jets flying over Syria were shot at by Syrian anti-aircraft ordnance.
Air force sources told the media that the aircraft were never in danger and the munitions were only shot off after the aircraft had returned to Israel and were in the process off landing.
The fact that no one was hurt is of course reassuring.
But the fact that Russia targeted the planes makes clear that Putin has decided to send Israel a very clear and menacing message.
He is now the protector of the Iranian-Hezbollah colony on our northern border. If Israel decides to preemptively attack targets belong to that colony, Russia will not stand by and watch. And with the US no longer well-positioned to challenge Russian power in the region, Israel will have to deal with Russia on its own.
To face this challenge, Israel needs to look beyond its traditional reliance on air power.
There are two parts of the challenge. The first part is Iran.
As far as Israel is concerned, the problem with the Russian- Iranian takeover of Syria is not Putin.
Putin is not inherently hostile to Israel, as his Soviet predecessors were. He is an opportunist. nObama gave him the opportunity to partner with Iran in asserting Russian dominance in the Middle East and he took it. Israel is threatened by the alliance because it is threatened by Iran, not by Putin. To neutralize the alliance’s threat to its own security, Israel then needs to degrade Iran’s power, and it needs to emphasize its own.
To accomplish these goals, Israel needs to operate in two completely separate arenas. To weaken Iran, Israel should take its cue from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and from its own past successful military ties to the Kurds of Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s.
Israel needs to deploy military trainers beyond its borders to work with other anti-Iranian forces. The goal of that cooperation must be to destabilize the regime, with the goal of overthrowing it. This may take time. But it must be done. The only way to neutralize the threat emanating from the new Syria is to change the nature of the Iranian regime that controls it.
As for Russia, Israel needs to demonstrate that it is a power that Putin can respect in its own right, and not a downgraded Washington’s sock puppet.
To this end, Israel should embark on a rapid expansion of its civilian presence along its eastern border with Syria and with Jordan. As Russia’s air base in Syria undermines Israel’s air superiority and reliance on air power, Israel needs to show that it will not be dislodged or allow its own territory to be threatened in any way. By doubling the Israeli population on the Golan Heights within five years, and vastly expanding its population in the Jordan Valley, Israel will accomplish two goals at once. It will demonstrate its independence from the US without harming US strategic interests. And it will reinforce its eastern border against expanded strategic threats from both the Golan Heights and the new Jordan with its bursting population of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
It is ironic that the new Middle East is coming into focus as Shimon Peres, the failed visionary of a fantasy- based new Middle East, is being laid to rest. But to survive in the real new Middle East, Israel must bury Peres’s belief that peace is built by appeasing enemies along with him. The world in which we live has a place for dreamers.
But dreams, unhinged from reality, lead to Aleppo, not to peace.
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